August 26, 2010-by Gitte Laasby in the Post Tribune. Ed. Note: Apparently the Indiana Department of Environmental Management does not give a hoot about the law or the health of the people who must live with the consequences of their inaction.
HAMLET -- The Indiana Department of Environmental Management won't answer questions from the Post-Tribune about how the agency is handling an illegal, scalding-hot discharge from a mint farm that killed a dog in Starke County.
IDEM has ignored five requests for information over the last eight days from the paper, which sought an update on the situation. IDEM did not acknowledge receipt of the Post-Tribune questions, but did provide the requested information to a TV station in South Bend.
An IDEM manager told WSBT last week that the Materna Mint Farm reduced the temperature of its unpermitted discharge to 75 degrees -- within the state's legal limit. About a week earlier, the station had measured up to 190 degrees in Robbins Ditch where the discharged water ended up. On Aug. 7, the discharge killed a white Labrador who jumped into the ditch. The dog's owner suffered second-degree burns on his foot when he tried to save the dog.
WSBT reported that "No trespassing" signs had also been posted last week.
Less than a week after the dog's death, IDEM inspector Michael Kuss visited the Hamlet mint farm and told his bosses that he was worried about the threat to human health and the environment, sources told the Post-Tribune. Kuss said he had suggested lowering the temperature of the discharge by cutting back on production, but that mint farm owners didn't seem interested. He also suggested diluting the 150-degree discharge with cold water.
At the time, Kuss said he found it "awkward" to advise the mint farm on how to lower the temperature in the discharge, knowing the discharge is illegal. Kuss indicated that someone in IDEM's Office of Water Quality didn't want the discharge shut off.
One source said Kuss' superior, IDEM Northern Regional Office director Michael Aylesworth, had cited concerns that shutting down the discharge would endanger the mint crop.
The source said the incident should have been treated as a spill, which generally means emergency crews are dispatched to take care of the problem immediately.
IDEM spokeswoman Amy Hartsock previously told the Post-Tribune that the discharge didn't meet IDEM's definitions of a spill. She did not elaborate on why. Go to Original
Cancer -- The Number One Killer -- And Its Environmental Causes
August 17, 2010-by Karl Grossman in the Huffington Post. "The evidence is there that the majority of cancer cases are environmentally caused," says Dr. David Carpenter, founding dean of the University of Albany School of Public Health and now director of the Institute for Health and the Environment there.
The World Health Organization projects that this year cancer will become the world's leading cause of death. Why the epidemic of cancer? Death certificates in the United States show cancer as being the eighth leading cause of death in 1900.
Why has it skyrocketed to now surpass heart disease as number one?
Is it because people live longer and have to die of something? That's a factor, but not the prime reason as reflected by the jump in age-adjusted cancer being far above what could be expected from increased longevity. And it certainly doesn't explain the steep hike in childhood cancers. Is it lifestyle, diet and genetics, as we have often been told? They are factors, but not key reasons.
The cause of the cancer epidemic, as numerous studies have now documented, is largely environmental -- the result of toxic substances in the water we drink, the food we eat, the consumer products we use, the air we breathe. (Some of the pollution is voluntarily caused -- by smoking. But most is involuntary.)
As the President's Cancer Panel declared in May, in a 240-page report titled "Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now," : "The American people -- even before they are born -- are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures." It said: "With the growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer, the public is becoming increasingly aware of the unacceptable burden of cancer resulting from environmental and occupational exposures that could have been prevented through appropriate national action."
It pointed to chemicals and radiation as major causes of cancer and stated: "Cancer continues to shatter and steal the lives of Americans. Approximately 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about 21 percent will die from the cancer. The incidence of some cancers, including some most common among children, is increasing...The burgeoning number and complexity of known or suspected environmental carcinogens compel us to act to protect public health."
The panel urged President Obama "most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."
In 1980, another presidential panel, the Presidential Toxic Substances Strategy Committee, came to the same conclusion. It declared:
"Of the hazards to human health arising from toxic substances, cancer is a leading cause of concern. Cancer is the only major cause of death that has continued to rise since 1900. It is now second only to heart disease as a cause of death... Some of the increase in cancer mortality since 1900 is a function of the greater average age of the U.S. population and the medical progress made against infectious disease. But even after correcting for age, both mortality (death) rates and incidence (new cases) of cancer are increasing. Many now believe that environmental (nongenetic) factors -- life style and work and environmental exposures -- are significant in the great majority of cancer cases seen."
Meanwhile, through the years solid science done by independent researchers -- not those taking money from the chemical or nuclear industries -- has extensively documented this cancer/environment connection. (MORE) Go to Original
Dog boiled alive after jumping into mint farm discharge
August 15, 2010-by Gitte Laasby in the Post Tribune. On Thursday, South Bend TV station WSBT measured temperatures of water downstream from the mint farm as high as 190 degrees Fahrenheit. Photo shows IDEM Commissioner Thomas Easterly who happily says his job is economic development.
WALKERTON -- A yellow labrador was boiled alive after jumping into a ditch with scalding-hot water from an illegal water discharge.
The dog's owner sustained third-degree burns on his lower leg when he tried to save the dog. The mint farm responsible faces fines, but continued its deadly discharge Friday -- nearly a week later -- with the knowledge of state environmental officials.
An anonymous staff member at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management said the handling of the case is the latest example of the continuous dismantling of Indiana's environmental enforcement, which has included rewriting enforcement guidance and canceling contracts for local air pollution monitoring in Gary and Hammond.
IDEM spokeswoman Amy Hartsock acknowledged Friday that the Materna Mint Farm in Hamlet in Starke County was discharging without a permit. But despite a multiday investigation with the conclusion that the mint farm likely caused the scalding hot discharge, IDEM did not ask the company to stop discharging.
"My understanding is that we did conclude the discharge from the facility exceeds the limits," Hartsock told the Post-Tribune on Friday. "Our goal is to work with companies to make sure they take appropriate measures.
"We have told them they need to reduce the temperature and they need to do that as soon as possible. There are alternatives to achieve that, and we have told them to get that done. We are taking action. We want people to know we are just as concerned as they are that this matter is resolved. That's why we've been out there." (MORE) Go to Original
The Morality of Climate Change
August 11, 2010-byDonald A. Brown, Penn State University. "Ethical arguments that could counter the national-interest based arguments are rarely heard in the climate change debate and are now virtually absent in the U.S.
discussion of proposed domestic climate change legislation." This NASA satellite image shows an island of ice, 251 square kilometres in size, breaking away from the rest of the Petermann Glacier on Aug. 5. (NASA/MODIS)
What is the worst ethical scandal in the US Congress? Could it be climate change?
Although the US media has recently paid attention to the comparatively minor ethical stories unfolding in the US House of Representatives, there is not a peep in the US media about a much more momentous unfolding ethical failure in the US Senate. While many press stories have appeared in the past few week about potential ethical problems of Representatives Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters in the House, ethical lapses that harm society because public servants may have abused their power in ways that enrich themselves or their families, the US Senate ethical failure is more ethically reprehensible because it is depriving tens of millions of people around the world of life itself or the natural resources necessary to sustain life. The failure in the US Senate to enact legislation to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions is a moral lapse of epic proportions. Yet it is not discussed this way.
There are several distinct features of climate change that call for its recognition as creating civilization challenging ethical questions.
First, climate change creates ethical duties because those most responsible for causing this problem are the richer developed countries, yet those who are most vulnerable to the problem's harshest impacts are some of the world's poorest people in developing countries. That is, climate change is an ethical problem because its biggest victims are people who can do little to reduce its threat.
Second, climate-change impacts are potentially catastrophic for many of the poorest people around the world. Climate change harms include deaths from disease, droughts, floods, heat, and intense storms, damages to homes and villages from rising oceans, adverse impacts on agriculture, diminishing natural resources, the inability to rely upon traditional sources of food, and the destruction of water supplies. In fact, climate change threatens the very existence of some small island nations. Clearly these impacts are potentially catastrophic and there is a growing scientific consensus that we are running out of time to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The third reason why climate change must be seen as an ethical problem stems from its global scope. (MORE) Go to Original
Fine Particle/Ozone Alert issued for SW Indiana
August 9, 2010- Ozone and fine particles will rise to an Orange alert today and tomorrow.
Air Quality Action Day has been forecast for Southwestern Indiana for today, August 9th and Tuesday, August 10th for Ozone (O3) and Fine Particles (PM2.5). This includes Vanderburgh, DuBois, Gibson, Knox, and Spencer counties in Indiana. Ozone and Fine Particle levels are expected to be in the orange or Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups range for today, August 9th and Tuesday, August 10th . People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion when outdoors.
B.C.'s carbon tax is looking like a winner Experts agree that the measure is working. Is anyone else watching?
July 29, 2010-By Stewart Elgie, Nic Rivers and Nancy Olwwiler in the Times Colonist. The carbon tax has obvious moral appeal. By tying the pollution tax to reduced income taxes, B.C. has shifted from taxing "goods," like working and entrepreneurship, to taxing "bads," like pollution.
It's hard to tell which has sunk lower: BP's share price or the prospects for government action on climate change.
Despite daily reminders of the growing costs of oil addiction -- from blackened Louisiana shorelines to the melting Arctic -- climate change seems to have dropped off global leaders' agendas. The recent G20 declaration paid lip service to the issue, the U.S. Congress seems increasingly unlikely to pass a climate bill this year and Canada's official policy position is to say "after you" to the U.S.
All of which makes British Columbia's approach even more remarkable. On July 1, 2008, B.C. embarked on an ambitious climate policy path and brought in North America's first carbon-tax shift.
Though praised by environmentalists and economists, the measure was met by a host of concerns -- that it could increase taxes, decrease growth and hurt low-income families. Some pundits labelled it political suicide.
Two years later, it is possible to make a preliminary assessment of the tax. The conclusion is that B.C.'s policy experiment seems to be working.
B.C.'s carbon tax has two parts. First, it puts a price on emissions of carbon -- the main greenhouse gas, which comes from burning oil, gas or coal. That cost is now $20/tonne (it rises by $5 annually).
Second, the revenues are returned as tax cuts for individuals and business.
What effects has this had so far? Although it's impossible to precisely identify the impacts of the tax shift in an economy with thousands of changing variables, initial results allay concerns that it would harm the economy.
In fact, B.C.'s economic growth in 2009 -- the first full year the tax was in effect -- was higher than Canada's national rate. Unemployment, although high because of wider economic events, is below the national average and does not appear to have jumped when the tax shift came in. (MORE)
July 26, 2010-By Lee Wasserman, Director of the Rockefeller Family fund in the New York Times. Had Lyndon Johnson likewise relied on polling, he would have told the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to talk only about the expanded industry and jobs that Southerners would realize after passage of a federal civil rights act. I could imagine Dr. King’s response.
If President Obama and Congress had announced that no financial reform legislation would pass unless Goldman Sachs agreed to the bill, we would conclude our leaders had been standing in the Washington sun too long. Yet when it came to addressing climate change, that is precisely the course the president and Congress took. Lacking support from those most responsible for the problem, they have given up on passing a major climate bill this year.
It’s true that passing legislation to rebuild our fossil fuel-based economy was always going to be a momentous challenge. Senators and representatives feel in their bones (and campaign accounts) the interests of utilities and the coal and oil industries. Even well-intentioned members of Congress struggle to balance the competing needs of energy-intensive industries, coal workers and American families.
But with climate change a stated priority for President Obama and Congress, how did they fall so short? By weaving four coordinated threads into a shroud of inaction. This began long before President Obama took office, but rather than rip up the old pattern — as he advocated during the campaign — the president quickly took his place at the loom.
• Thread No. 1: Climate is out; green jobs are in. • Thread No. 2: Devising a bill for historic polluters, not the American people. • Thread No. 3: A Rube Goldberg-policy construction. • Thread No. 4: The public sits it out.
July 22, 2010-by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor. The full moon is Saturday night. This picture was shot one month ago as a waxing moon rose over Marina Point and the LST 325.
The boat is a Landing Ship Tank, this LST that was similar to those made in in Evansville during World War 2. As such we use it as a tourist attraction to memorialize the War.
Lots of ground soldiers were transported on LSTs as they invaded places like Normandy Beach on D-Day.
We always celebrate war in Indiana as if it is a good thing. At least as long as we win.
NOAA: June, April to June, and Year-to-Date Global Temperatures are Warmest on Record
July 22, 2010-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administratioon. The global June land surface temperature was 1.93°F (1.07°C) above the 20th century average of 55.9 °F (13.3°C) — the warmest on record. Graph credit: NOAA
Last month’s combined global land and ocean surface temperature made it the warmest June on record and the warmest on record averaged for any April-June and January-June periods, according to NOAA. Worldwide average land surface temperature was the warmest on record for June and the April-June period, and the second warmest on record for the year-to-date (January-June) period, behind 2007.
The monthly analysis from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, which is based on records going back to 1880, is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides government, business and community leaders so they can make informed decisions.
Global Temperature Highlights – June
• The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record at 61.1°F (16.2°C), which is 1.22°F (0.68°C) above the 20th century average of 59.9°F (15.5°C). • The global June land surface temperature was 1.93°F (1.07°C) above the 20th century average of 55.9 °F (13.3°C) — the warmest on record.
•• Warmer-than-average conditions dominated the globe, with the most prominent warmth in Peru, the central and eastern contiguous U.S., and eastern and western Asia. Cooler-than-average regions included Scandinavia, southern China and the northwestern contiguous United States. •• According to Beijing Climate Center, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang and Jilin had their warmest June since national records began in 1951. Meanwhile, Guizhou experienced its coolest June on record. •• According to Spain’s meteorological office, the nationwide average temperature was 0.7°F (0.4°C) above normal, Spain's coolest June since 1997.
The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.97°F (0.54°C) above the 20th century average of 61.5°F (16.4°C), which was the fourth warmest June on record. The warmth was most pronounced in the Atlantic Ocean. Sea surface temperature continued to decrease across the equatorial Pacific Ocean during June 2010, consistent with the end of El Niño. According to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, La Niña conditions are likely to develop during the northern hemisphere summer 2010.
April – June 2010 and Year-to-Date
• The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for April-June 2010 was 1.26°F (0.70°C) above the 20th century average—the warmest April-June period on record. • For the year-to-date, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 57.5°F (14.2°C) was the warmest January-June period. This value is 1.22°F (0.68°C) above the 20th century average. (MORE)
IDEM's Easterly denies any responsibility for the pile of crap he left behind by Lake Michigan
July 19, 2010-by Gitte Laasby, in the Post Tribune. According to an IDEM inspection report this spring, the pile is 900 feet long and 67 feet tall. It contains slag and 274,000 cubic yards of basic oxygen furnace sludge and rubble interspersed with burned lime. The pile sits a couple of hundred feet from Lake Michigan and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Nearby are tall piles of rubble.
ndiana Department of Environmental Management Commissioner Thomas Easterly is getting fed up with media reports and activists' complaints about how his agency handles environmental issues in Northwest Indiana.
In a recent letter to IDEM employees, Easterly voiced his disgruntlement with activists' challenges of BP Whiting's air permit, and delays in issuing U.S. Steel Gary Works' wastewater permit.
» Click to enlarge image
Thomas Easterly, IDEM Commissioner (Post-Tribune file photo)
He also denied the existence of a pile of steelmaking waste that representatives at ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor named after him.
"Recent stories about recycling, materials management, and waste management at Arcelor Mittal Burns Harbor ... have even named a non-existent feature after me," Easterly wrote in the June 3 memo obtained by the Post-Tribune. "Recent observations by a State Legislator and IDEM staff, including Chief of Staff (Kent) Abernathy, confirm my recollection from 10 years ago that the area called a 'pile' by the press is actually a depression partially filled with stockpiled materials for recycling to make steel."
Valparaiso lawyer Kim Ferraro, of the Legal Environmental Aid Foundation of Indiana, said the definition of the area is a matter of semantics.
"Whether it's a depressed area or level ground doesn't matter. It's full of stockpiled materials. It doesn't make a difference," she said. "There are definitely wastes sitting out there next to Lake Michigan, and IDEM has documented it in their own inspection reports." (MORE) Go to Original
National Academy of Science issues grave report on climate change
Juy 18, 2010- National Academy of Science press release. Even if emissions held steady, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would increase, much like the water level in a bathtub when water is coming in faster than it is draining. Emissions reductions larger than about 80 percent, relative to whatever peak global emissions rate may be reached, would be required to approximately stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations for a century or so at any chosen target level.
WASHINGTON — Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia, says a new report from the National Research Council. Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.
Policy choices about emissions can be informed by recent advances in climate research that quantify the relationships between atmospheric CO2 and warming levels, and between warming levels and future impacts. Drawing upon this research, the report estimates changes in precipitation, streamflow, wildfires, crop yields, and sea level rise that can be expected with different degrees of warming. It also estimates the average temperature increases that would be likely if CO2 were stabilized in the atmosphere at various target levels. However, the report does not recommend any particular stabilization target, noting that choosing among different targets is a policy choice rather than strictly a scientific one because of questions of values regarding how much risk or damage to people or to nature might be considered too much.
Increased Confidence About Future Impacts
Although some important future effects of climate change are difficult to quantify, there is now increased confidence in how global warming of various levels would relate to several key impacts, says the report. It lists some of these impacts per degree Celsius (or per 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming, for example (these apply for 1 C to 4 C of warming):
• 5 percent to 10 percent less total rain in southwest North America, the Mediterranean, and southern Africa per degree Celsius of warming. • 5 percent to 10 percent less streamflow in some river basins, including the Arkansas and Rio Grande, per degree Celsius of warming. • 5 percent to 15 percent lower yields of some crops, including U.S. and African corn and Indian wheat, per degree Celsius of warming.
While total rain is expected to decrease in some areas, more of the rain that does occur is expected to occur in heavy falls in most land areas (3 percent to 10 percent more heavy rain per degree Celsius). In addition, warming of 1C to 2 C (1.8 F to 3.6 F) could be expected to lead to a twofold to fourfold increase per degree in the area burned by wildfire in parts of western North America, the report says. Warming of 3 C (5.4 F) would put many millions more people at risk of coastal flooding and lead to the loss of about 250,000 square km of wetlands and drylands. And warming of 4 C (7.2 F) would lead to far warmer summers; about nine out of 10 summers would be warmer than the warmest ever experienced during the last decades of the 20th century over nearly all land areas.
Stabilizing Atmospheric CO2 Requires Deep Emissions Cuts
Currently the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 390 parts per million volume (ppmv), the highest level in at least 800,000 years. Depending on emissions rates, that level could double or nearly triple by the end of the century, greatly amplifying future human impacts on climate, the report says. (MORE)
You may read the entire report online or download an excellent summary by clicking then link below. Go to Original
In this picture two bugs of unknown species, at least to me were enjoying and "afternoon delight" as they attempted to propagate their species on a zinnia leaf in front of the office.
The colorful bugs had an interesting way of doing that as they used their back ends propped up against on another.
I was mot impressed with their brilliant turquoise, orange and yellow colors.
Clean coal dream a costly nightmare
July 11, 2010-By Michael Hawthorne in the Chicago Tribune. "By the time construction began on the Prairie State plant in 2007, Peabody had raised the price tag to $2.9 billion. Since then, the estimated cost has risen to $4.4 billion, forcing municipal investors throughout the Midwest to borrow more to cover the overruns."
Editor's Note: We take little solace in the fact that Valley Watch was the first organization in the nation to make the arguments this story outlines. We wrote letters to City Councils and Town Boards warning them of this exact scenario while they were being sold a pig in a poke by a greedy Peabody Energy.
Now, communities across Indiana and much of the midwest will face significant financial hardships because they chose to listen to snake oil salesmen instead of reasoned economic and environmental arguments.
First, it was Peabody's greed but that greed was passed to those small, ignorant communities that allowed themselves to be taken in and will now forever pay a price in their own economic and environmental demise.
Truly sad but very predictable even in 2001 when we first began making those arguments.
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Sold on a promise of cheap, clean electricity, dozens of communities in Illinois and eight other Midwest states instead are facing more expensive utility bills after bankrolling a new coal-fired power plant that will be one of the nation's largest sources of climate-change pollution.
As the Prairie State Energy Campus rises out of a Downstate field, its price tag already has more than doubled to $4.4 billion — costs that will largely be borne by municipalities including the suburbs of Naperville, Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles and Winnetka.
The communities are locked into 28-year contracts that will require higher electricity rates to cover the construction overruns, documents and interviews show. Municipal officials told the Tribune they expect costs to soar even higher before the plant begins operating next year.
Then there are the environmental costs of the project, which was designed by St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world's largest private coal company, to burn fossil fuel from one of its nearby coal mines. (MORE) Go to Original
Climate Change and American Security
July 6, 2010-Peter Sinclair delves into the issue of whether we should concern ourselves with climate change strictly from a national security aspect.
But alas, here I am still trying to figure it out.
I have it down to three essential ingredients.
1. Freedom is absolute. You are either free or you are not. Of course we are all free to restrict our freedom as we choose but we as individuals must freely decide how we choose to define those restrictions.
2. Freedom is not something that is bestowed government or individual to another. It is something that is inherent in the human species and others. As a result freedom is something that is taken or seized by individuals from the spiritual world.
3. Most importantly, freedom does not exist unless it is fully and freely exercised since, just like a muscle if it is not regularly exercised, it atrophies and when you need it it will no longer be there.
Being free is not without effort or sacrifice but its fruits are well worth both.
Daniels. Easterly make mockery of Indiana Open Records Law
June 29, 2010-This is a post on the Indiana law Blog. It should send chills through all Hoosiers who believe in government without fascism.
Mitch Daniels says he is a conservative but his actions continue to belie that fact. Since he ascended to the office of governor of indiana he acts as if it is his person fiefdom and that his serfs have no rights to question anything he does. Go to Original
Morning Joe discusses Cantwell-Collins CLEAR Act
June 23, 2010-Today's Morning Joe, MSNBC's morning talk show had an interview with Bill sponsor, Maria Cantwell, (D, Washington) explaining just how her bi-paartisan bill, which is co-sponsoreed by Maine Senator Susan Collins (R).
Cantwell-Collins is only 39 pages long and its simplicity is not the only sound thing going for it.
There is a solution to the carbon crisis in the US. Cantwell/Collins bi-partisan bill will get the job done.
June 17, 2010-by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor. While proposals are offered to give gigantic subsidies to polluters to experiment with carbon reduction schemes and new centralized power that assures more dangerous and dirty power in the future, a solution has been introduced in the Senate.
The CLEAR Act: Senators Cantwell and Collins' solution towards ending America's fossil fuel addiction and jump starting our clean energy economy. Learn more at: http://cantwell.senate.gov/issues/CLE... Go to Original
TVA may have weakened EPA's coal ash stance
June 7, 2010-By Anne Paine in The Tennessean. When a dike broke at the Kingston coal-fired plant
in East Tennessee in December 2008, about 5.4
million cubic yards of the ash avalanched into the
Emory River and across 300 acres, damaging homes
and destroying woods and wetlands. File Photo show a waste pit at Alcoa that stored wet coal ash, by John Blair
An accidentally released internal federal document shows that the public power producer, still cleaning up from a massive coal ash spill in 2008, criticized EPA's original draft proposal, which said coal ash should be classified as a "special" waste, making it fall under hazardous waste rules.
Before the public — including TVA's critics — got to see that original draft, the EPA issued a rewritten proposal last month that added a weaker alternative that would allow each state to decide on any regulations for coal ash, with lawsuits serving as the main enforcement tool.
Coal ash can be laced with varying levels of potentially toxic substances, including lead, arsenic and mercury, and environmental groups have pushed for more than a decade for regulating its disposal.
While federal departments, including Transportation, Energy and Interior, also commented on the original EPA draft, TVA, an independent federal corporation that relies heavily on burning coal to generate electricity, had a direct conflict of interest, said OMB Watch, a D.C.-based group that advocates for open government.
"You have this federal corporation that is at least in part responsible for EPA even writing the regulation in the first place now getting a sneak peak at it," said Matt Madia, regulatory policy analyst for OMB Watch.
"TVA has the same right to comment as everybody else, but this was happening before the public ever saw it. They were given privilege in this case."
OMB Watch contends that TVA was enjoying the perks of its government ties while keeping the mindset of an anti-regulatory, private polluter.(MORE) Go to Original
Mountain Top Removal activists finding courts are siding with coal companies against them
June 7, 2010-By Peter Slavin, Special to the Los Angeles Times. For 16 months, they have protested mountaintop mining. Now the coal giant is pursuing court injunctions, and the demonstrators are facing more severe punishments for their civil disobedience.
Reporting from Rock Creek, W.Va. — In just eight words, James "Guin" McGuinness, a veteran environmental activist, summed up the fight being waged against Massey Energy Co.'s mountaintop removal mining here in the Coal River Valley.
"They draw a line," he said. "We step over it."
Although public scrutiny of Massey has focused on the April 5 mine explosion that took 29 lives — a congressional committee grilled company executives last month — the battle between the company and activists has largely escaped notice outside West Virginia. The conflict has dragged on for 16 months, and there is no end in sight.
The group Climate Ground Zero has performed 21 acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, including shackling themselves to towering draglines and bulldozers, canoeing across a toxic waste impoundment, and occupying a Massey subsidiary's office for 10 days. Most notably, members have camped out in trees to fight the practice of blowing up mountains to expose coal seams.
Coal giant Massey has labeled the protesters "criminals" and "environmental terrorists." The company is pursuing court injunctions against them and seeking financial damages. The group has not been cowed.
Activists say they are breaking the law to halt mining damage so grave it amounts to a crime. Mountaintop removal has left valleys and rivers clogged with debris, wells ruined and nearby homes uninhabitable.
Among the tree-sitters was Amber Nitchman. After some training, Nitchman volunteered to tree-sit with two other young people last winter to halt coal miners from blasting near a tiny community. Nineteen, single and determined, she was undeterred by the prospect of arrest.
On a moonlit night in January, the three protesters hauled their gear up the mountain for six hours in the dark and ascended three trees. Nitchman perched 60 feet up on a platform the size of a cot, anchored to an oak. (MORE)
More flowers attract more insects as Evansville dries out
June 6, 2010-by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor. Rain has been in short supply in the Evansville area recently although showers have been forecast regularly of late. But that has not stopped the explosion of color in the Valley Watch garden or the insects that have followed their growth
Most of the Valley Watch garden is "volunteer" this year with lots of Sunflowers, Black-eyed Susans and Echinacea in abundance. Along with all the bursting color, a wide variety of insects can be seen.
Some are welcome like bees and others can be pests like grasshoppers, but we don't use poisons and just let them go since that is really the sustainable way and won't hurt the birds and cats that find cover amongst the plants.
Valley Watch Responds to EPA's new Sulfur Dioxide Rule
June 3, 2010-Valley Watch press release.
Valley Watch cautiously applauds today's announcement by the US EPA of a new more rigorous standard for Sulfur Dioxide (SO2). The old standard of 140 parts per billion (PPB) averaged over 24 hours was set all the way back in the 1970s and failed to protect health. The new standard, finalized today will set a 1 hour standard of 75 PPB.
Valley Watch and the Center for Biological Diversity had sued the EPA early in this decade to force EPA to set the new standard and won our suit. Valley Watch also presented testimony at the EPA's only "field hearing" in Atlanta last January.
"Valley Watch is proud to have been a part of the development of this new more protective Ambient Air Quality Standard. For years we fought to get this standard and our efforts have finally paid off," declared Valley Watch president, John Blair. "Although we hoped EPA would adopt more stringent standard, history has shown that EPA is usually reticent to go to the level needed to be absolutely protective, especially when so many large corporate polluters are telling them to relax or leave the standard alone. Therefore, the adoption of a 75 PPB standard is obviously the best we could do at this time."
The new standard does finally leave Vanderburgh County out of the areas that will be considered as "nonattainment" or violating the new standard when the rule is implemented. Valley Watch also played a part in that by being the only regional party to offer testimony that the County was "too often penalized as being nonattainment when there was virtually nothing that could be done since all the large SO2 polluters were the numerous coal fired power plants that surrounded Vanderburgh.
EPA did list Daviess, Gibson and Warrick as monitored counties that fail to meet the new standard and thus will have to come up with a plan to mitigate their pollution. EPA used data from 2007 to 2009 at monitors in those counties which determined their violations. Unfortunately for those counties, they had violations even though most of the sources in those counties claim to have installed "scrubbers" designed to remove SO2 from plant emissions and reflected reduced production and emissions due to the recession.
Other Indiana Counties that fail to meet the new standard are: Floyd, Fountain, Marion, Morgan Vigo and Wayne. Only counties with operating monitors were determined as nonattainment this time around.
However, EPA ordered a new monitoring protocol which requires additional monitors in southwest Indiana as well as Henderson and Owensboro, KY according to a map EPA publised today.
Valley Watch works with an all volunteer staff to accomplish our mission "to protect the public health and environment of the lower Ohio River Valley."
I 69 - The road frugality forgot.
June 3, 2010-by Dan Carpenter in the Indianapolis Star. Daniels had a choice; and even with land acquisition and excavation and contracting under way, he still wakes up every morning with a choice about this boondoggle. Instead, he crows about accelerating the bulldozer blitz while waxing apocalyptic about the conjectural cost of expanding health care, which may not nick the state as much in a decade as the I-69 extension and about which the state has no choice.
Though he'd never let himself get caught borrowing such language, Gov. Mitch Daniels could describe the I-69 extension as his stimulus package.
Certainly, it fits the formula he'd love to cite if the other political party were pushing it: huge, overpriced, unnecessary, even destructive public works project designed to please special interests and generate temporary jobs, with the vague promise of lasting economic value.
As a twist, the gold-paved road to Evansville is an inherited mess, a legacy from the Democrats that Daniels could have treated with all the warmth he showed toward the rest of the budget problems that awaited his legendary "blade." Instead, he embraced the waste.
He could have saved a few billion tax dollars by aborting the project altogether, leaving Evansville with the two federal highway connections (including I-64) that it already has and leaving Indiana in the top half-dozen or so states in interstate density.
Or, he could have proceeded with I-69 but used the least expensive, least property-consuming, least environmentally damaging of the various routes that were proposed before Daniels' predecessor chose the opposite alternative, the so-called "new terrain" corridor. (MORE) Go to Original
August 26, 2010-by Gitte Laasby in the Post Tribune. Ed. Note: Apparently the Indiana Department of Environmental Management does not give a hoot about the law or the health of the people who must live with the consequences of their inaction.
August 17, 2010-by Karl Grossman in the Huffington Post. "The evidence is there that the majority of cancer cases are environmentally caused," says Dr. David Carpenter, founding dean of the University of Albany School of Public Health and now director of the Institute for Health and the Environment there. 
August 15, 2010-by Gitte Laasby in the Post Tribune. On Thursday, South Bend TV station WSBT measured temperatures of water downstream from the mint farm as high as 190 degrees Fahrenheit. Photo shows IDEM Commissioner Thomas Easterly who happily says his job is economic development.
August 11, 2010-byDonald A. Brown, Penn State University. "Ethical arguments that could counter the national-interest based arguments are rarely heard in the climate change debate and are now virtually absent in the U.S.
discussion of proposed domestic climate change legislation." This NASA satellite image shows an island of ice, 251 square kilometres in size, breaking away from the rest of the Petermann Glacier on Aug. 5. (NASA/MODIS)
August 9, 2010- Ozone and fine particles will rise to an Orange alert today and tomorrow. 
July 29, 2010-By Stewart Elgie, Nic Rivers and Nancy Olwwiler in the Times Colonist. The carbon tax has obvious moral appeal. By tying the pollution tax to reduced income taxes, B.C. has shifted from taxing "goods," like working and entrepreneurship, to taxing "bads," like pollution.
July 26, 2010-By Lee Wasserman, Director of the Rockefeller Family fund in the New York Times. Had Lyndon Johnson likewise relied on polling, he would have told the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to talk only about the expanded industry and jobs that Southerners would realize after passage of a federal civil rights act. I could imagine Dr. King’s response.
July 22, 2010-by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor. The full moon is Saturday night. This picture was shot one month ago as a waxing moon rose over Marina Point and the LST 325.
July 22, 2010-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administratioon. The global June land surface temperature was 1.93°F (1.07°C) above the 20th century average of 55.9 °F (13.3°C) — the warmest on record. Graph credit: NOAA
Juy 18, 2010- National Academy of Science press release. Even if emissions held steady, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would increase, much like the water level in a bathtub when water is coming in faster than it is draining. Emissions reductions larger than about 80 percent, relative to whatever peak global emissions rate may be reached, would be required to approximately stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations for a century or so at any chosen target level.
July 16, 2010-Yesterday John Blair, Valley Watch president appeared on the right wing radio program Live with Les on AM 1280 WGBF in Evansville. Photo © 2010 Will Blair
July 15, 2010-By John Blair, valleywatch.net editor. Photo©2010 John Blair
July 11, 2010-By Michael Hawthorne in the Chicago Tribune. "By the time construction began on the Prairie State plant in 2007, Peabody had raised the price tag to $2.9 billion. Since then, the estimated cost has risen to $4.4 billion, forcing municipal investors throughout the Midwest to borrow more to cover the overruns."
July 4, 2010-by John Blair. Trying to remain free takes effort and desire. Photo © 1989 John Blair.
June 29, 2010-This is a post on the Indiana law Blog. It should send chills through all Hoosiers who believe in government without fascism.
June 7, 2010-By Anne Paine in The Tennessean. When a dike broke at the Kingston coal-fired plant
in East Tennessee in December 2008, about 5.4
million cubic yards of the ash avalanched into the
Emory River and across 300 acres, damaging homes
and destroying woods and wetlands. File Photo show a waste pit at Alcoa that stored wet coal ash, by John Blair 
June 7, 2010-By Peter Slavin, Special to the Los Angeles Times. For 16 months, they have protested mountaintop mining. Now the coal giant is pursuing court injunctions, and the demonstrators are facing more severe punishments for their civil disobedience.
June 6, 2010-by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor. Rain has been in short supply in the Evansville area recently although showers have been forecast regularly of late. But that has not stopped the explosion of color in the Valley Watch garden or the insects that have followed their growth
June 3, 2010-Valley Watch press release. 
June 3, 2010-by Dan Carpenter in the Indianapolis Star. Daniels had a choice; and even with land acquisition and excavation and contracting under way, he still wakes up every morning with a choice about this boondoggle. Instead, he crows about accelerating the bulldozer blitz while waxing apocalyptic about the conjectural cost of expanding health care, which may not nick the state as much in a decade as the I-69 extension and about which the state has no choice.
